


there's no place like home

by virtueoso



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Team Canada
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 08:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17639246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/virtueoso/pseuds/virtueoso
Summary: Team Canada Goes Camping, Or: How The Thank You Canada Tour Nearly Ended A Month Before It Began. As taken from the journals of Eric Radford.





	there's no place like home

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was 90% written before Weaver/Poje joined the tour, and I'm too lazy to rewrite the whole thing to include them, sorry! Thanks to Marcia for beta-ing, and for educating me on the many differences between camping and backpacking.

******Day 1, 11am.**

As I write, I am ever more aware of the elbow shoved into my ribs and the musty smell of day-old cheese sandwiches wafting from the back of the van. My classical mixtapes lie abandoned on the floor of the car, in favour of Bruce Springsteen.

When Meagan messaged the group chat to suggest a pre-tour camping trip to “bond as a team before we live in a tour bus together and we can’t stand the sight of each other”, I was on board with my partner’s idea - sceptical, but on board.

Now I’m beginning to think that this whole trip was a terrible, terrible mistake.

I don’t know what Tessa’s planning on doing this week, but she can’t possibly need _three_ bags. Scott’s been roped into carrying two of them already. How she does it, I don’t know. Maybe it was part of the deal that got her on board with this parade of fools – and to be fair, I don’t blame her. If I could convince my partner to act as packhorse for the duration of this camping trip, I would. Unfortunately, I suspect that Meagan would turn round and tell me where to shove it if I tried.

Scott doesn’t seem too bothered about being criminally taken advantage of. Actually, I don’t think anything could bother him right now – he’s yelling Springsteen lyrics at the top of his lungs, with his head stuck out of the passenger window like an excited dog. Tessa, our designated driver, is not impressed. Nor is the rest of the car. Even Patrick’s given up trying to make conversation and has plugged headphones in his ears. Kaetlyn’s asleep, somehow. I thought the siren call of country music would be sure to wake her, but I think she’s drooling on Patrick’s shoulder. Best not tell him.

Meagan looks like she’s ready to commit murder and it’s only been an hour.

I’m trying to think positive. If Scott gets his head lopped off by a passing truck, at least there’ll be one less of us for her to garrotte in our sleep.

\--  
**  
Day 1, 9pm.**

It turns out that Scott has absolutely nothing in his rucksack except a tent, a pair of swimming trunks, and three crates of beer.

How he’s managing to lug all that around on _top_ of Tessa’s bag, I don’t know. How Tessa still gets away with making him lug her bag around, I do, unfortunately, know.  

I think that _they_ think they’re being subtle. Let the records show that sticking your tongue down your partner’s throat when you think you’re hidden behind a tree, but are, in fact, in full view of the campfire is less than subtle. Patrick suggested that French kissing is how they greet people in Ilderton – which, if so, explains a lot about Tessa and Scott.  

They’re insufferable already, and we’ve only cracked open the first crate of beer.

At least Patrick is here to keep me sane.

 **\--  
**  
**Day 2, 10am.**

What did we learn today, class? Never disrupt someone’s morning routine.

Athletes are creatures of habit – it comes with the territory. When your life is built around turning up to the same place, running through the same moves, seeing the same people every day for twenty years, you can get pretty set in your ways. Meagan gets up at five in the morning to watch the sun rise while she does yoga. (I have tried this once, for her sake. Never again.) Normally, her early rising is not a problem. However, the soothing sounds of yoga meditation music do not seem to mesh well with the rest of the group, particularly given the hefty quantities of cheap beer consumed last night. (Three crates are now one – on the plus side, Scott has a newly-empty rucksack in which to carry even more of Tessa’s stuff.)

I woke to the dulcet tones of a very hungover Scott Moir, asking Meagan if she would mind very much either taking her yoga to a sun-dappled clearing in the forest where she can commune with the woodland creatures in peace, or turning her music the fuck down when most sane human beings are trying to sleep.

As you can imagine, Meagan did not take too kindly to his tone of voice.

Of course, once the two of them were up and bickering, Kaetlyn emerged to see what all the fuss was about, and Patrick turned up too (that man is much too chipper running on three hours’ sleep and about sixteen beers). Kaetlyn started arguing on behalf of Meagan, and Patrick started arguing in defence of Scott, and I, like the supportive partner that I am, stayed in my tent and pretended to be asleep.

Tessa slept through the whole thing. Check fifty under ‘reasons to believe she’s not actually human, but in fact an ice-dancing messiah sent to bring salvation to mankind’.

 **\--  
**  
**Day 3, 8am.**

I can safely say that last night was an experience I never want to repeat for as long as I may live.

Let me set the scene for you.

It’s dark and cold. My bladder is full. My phone is out of battery, so I’m fumbling blind as I stumble my way towards the communal toilets, praying that I don’t trip and split my head open on a pebble, or accidentally crush a chipmunk.

I walk straight into Tessa’s tent.

How do I know it’s Tessa’s, you might ask? It’s because she, the only one of us who has never gone camping before, is also the only one who shelled out for a “deluxe survivalist tent”, complete with a little tent porch and windows. It’s actually pretty cute. I wish I’d got one myself.

Anyway, I walk into her tent, and immediately trip over myself hissing out apologies, hoping that I haven’t awoken the beast. There’s nothing but silence. Not even a rustle, or a “fuck off, Eric”. I begin to think that either I’ve really pissed her off or she’s been eaten by a bear, and neither of those scenarios are desirable. Either way, Scott would never let me live it down.

I poke her tent a little bit, just to make sure she’s alive in there – still nothing. Taking my life into my own hands, I stick my head inside. It’s completely empty. There’s a sleeping bag there, and one of those fancy air mattresses, but no Tessa.

Now I start to panic. Maybe we accidentally camped across from an axe murderer. I don’t want to go stumbling around in the dark and trip over her dead body. I know in the movies these things usually happen to fresh-faced teens, but the way some of us have been behaving, you’d barely know the difference.

But alright. I try to get a grip. Maybe she’s decided to go to the toilet at the exact same time as me. Coincidences do happen.

So I trudge on towards the toilet block. My eyes are adjusting to the dark, but that makes it even worse. The woods are completely silent, and the campground is virtually empty apart from our little cluster of tents. It’s not helping my axe murderer theory one bit.  

I get to the toilets, and of course, there’s no one inside. I’m panicking more than a little bit now, but I do my business and head back to the tents. She’s probably gone to get water from the tap, or maybe I missed her wandering around in the dark, but God, what’s the standard protocol if you happen across a murder scene? She didn’t even want to come camping in the first place. Am I going to live with a friend’s blood on my hands for the rest of my life?

Suddenly, I hear hushed voices close by. I stop.

The voices are too quiet to work out who they belong to, but there’s definitely more than one. Slowly, I make my way towards the sound. There’s a faint bit of light coming from the same direction as the voices, but as I get closer, both blink out abruptly. Now I wonder if I’m about to become Axe Murderer Victim Number Two. I have no shame in admitting that my legs were nearly giving way beneath me. All around me, the woods are pitch black, closing in. I look up at the stars, trying to calm myself before I go and confront whatever this godforsaken thing is – and then something warm and solid bumps into me.

It gives a small shriek, and I give a small shriek, and Scott all but throws himself out of what I now remember is his tent, pitched behind a small, leafless shrub which he was adamant would give him protection from the cold.

I look down at the warm, solid, shrieking thing, and it’s Tessa. Not dead, not dismembered, not eaten by a bear. Her phone is clutched in her hand, the flashlight shining dimly through her fingers across the lens. Her other hand is outstretched towards the zipper of Scott's tent. A pair of fluffy pyjama bottoms peek through under her coat, and her feet are slipped loosely into her shoes, the laces undone, like I’ve caught her in a hurry to be somewhere, or back from somewhere. She has this rabbit-in-the-headlights look, her eyes so wide I can see the whites of them even in the darkness... And I mean, I know I’m tall and intimidating and have a tendency to loom over normal-sized humans, but I’m not _that_ terrifying, right?

Except then I look up at Scott. And I notice that he’s only half-dressed. And, he, too has that exact same look on his face.

I look back to Tessa, then to Scott, then back to Tessa.

The penny drops.

There will never be any escape from this sordid hellhole.

**\--  
**   
**Day 3, 9pm.**

Tessa must have felt bad about last night, because she took it upon herself to make dinner this evening. I wish I hadn’t come across evidence of my two close friends in a compromising position, but I wish more that she hadn’t felt compelled to cook as a consequence.

There was nothing remotely edible about the meal she served to everyone.

Scott, poor guy, ate the whole thing. Now, I know he’s won three Olympic gold medals, but if you ask me, that was his greatest accomplishment. He even managed to look like he enjoyed it. I don’t know if that was the right call, though; I think it only encouraged Tessa. She mentioned something about “trying a vegan dish next time, so that everyone can enjoy the meal”.

The look on Meagan’s face was something I will carry until my dying day. Or possibly hers, if she tries to ingest what Tessa cooks up for us next. Maybe we can conveniently ‘misplace’ the cooking equipment. Off a nearby cliff, perhaps.

Meagan’s vegan snack bars don’t look quite so bad after all.  

 **\--  
**  
**Day 4, 3pm.**

Never, ever make professional athletes participate in “a bit of friendly competition”. I cannot stress this enough.

Our hike today led us to the nearby lake, where Scott and Patrick decided that it would be a wonderful idea to hold a cannonball contest. As if we hadn’t already endangered our lives enough with Tessa’s cooking, we were now expected to jump off a thirty foot cliff, into a lake, and hope that we didn’t dash ourselves on the rocks below.

I thought retirement was supposed to be _relaxing_ , not whatever this trip has turned into. Can you imagine the headlines? “Olympic champion gets drunk and launches self off rock to impress girl”. Olympians are just like us, really.

Let me kill the suspense – nobody died. There was a close call on Patrick’s turn, but he managed to right himself before he lost his take-off leg. Scott’s face turned this funny shade of white. I’d never seen a human do that.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Tessa decided immediately that she wasn’t going to be drawn into such idiocy, and that she would judge instead. Meagan wasn’t having any of that – the accusations of favouritism were flying left and right before people had even changed into their swimming suits. She drew up a list of guidelines for Tessa to follow, to ensure that judging was fair and just. Like a true judge, I don’t think Tessa read a word of the rules that were handed to her, but she signed her name at the bottom and that was that. Meagan was satisfied.

The competition could commence.

I decided to go first, to end the ordeal as quickly as possible. It was a passable effort - a solid six out of ten, I thought, though I was more focused on trying not to die than actually doing anything fancy. Tessa gave me a seven, which was very nice of her. I think she’s still trying to make up for that night.

Kaetlyn was next up. She opted for a mid-air starfish pose, which was impressive for all of five seconds, before Meagan came out and performed three somersaults before hitting the water.  Nine out of ten for Meagan pretty much sealed the deal for everybody else.

Patrick, like I said, narrowly avoided a permanent retirement. He went for a Superman pose, one arm raised in the air above him, one leg stuck out behind him, and nearly lost the leg when he didn’t jump out far enough. His score of eight was generous.

Scott was last to go. Really, I think he was at a disadvantage from the very beginning. I’m surprised he didn’t trip and fall head-first off that rock when Tessa pulled off her top to reveal her bikini (Meagan did tell her very emphatically that she didn’t need to change if she was only judging, but I think the words fell on deaf ears).

As a figure skater, you get used to seeing your teammates in various stages of undress. Nakedness is not really an issue when you still remember when “the most decorated figure skater of all time” used to run around the boys’ changing rooms with a pair of underpants on his head (and at a later age than was strictly appropriate). But let me say this: if there was any bone in my body that was even _mildly_ straight, I would have known the moment Tessa stepped out in that high-waisted, fuchsia bikini with the black strapping.  

There was no hope for poor old Scott. To say his dive was a complete disaster would be putting it kindly.

He tried to do far too much. There’s only a few short seconds from jump to impact – enough for one pose (or if you’re tiny and superhuman like Meagan, three somersaults). Scott tried a pike jump, then twisting into a split, then – we all saw it coming, the surface of the lake rushing up towards him as he tried to tuck himself back into a cannonball, too late…

I’ve never before heard the sound of a man belly-flopping into the water after a thirty-foot fall, and I never want to hear it again. Every single person present at that lake physically recoiled. Tessa got to her feet immediately and rushed down to the water’s edge. You’ve got to think that when the judge has to help you out of the water because you’re too busy groaning in pain and clutching your abs to drag yourself up the sandbank, your marks might be affected.

Meagan was all for continuing with the competition, but it was decided by majority vote to end the contest at round one. Unsurprisingly, Scott came last. He didn’t seem too displeased with the result, not least because it meant that he could disappear with Tessa under the guise of “making sure he hadn’t injured himself”. Why that required Tessa’s company, I can only wonder.

It seemed uncharitable to steal their clothes while they were gone, so Patrick did it instead of me.   

It’s the little things in life that bring you the most joy.

 **\--  
**  
**Day 5, 12pm.**

I don’t know why Scott bothered bringing his own tent. He spends more time in Tessa’s than anywhere else. Neither of them have shown their faces yet today, not even when we started cooking bacon on the campfire. Normally that has Scott vaulting over tree, tent, and human alike. Surely they’ll have to surface at some point. Sex can only sustain you for so long.

We’ve passed an emergency campground motion that anyone passing within fifty yards of their tent has to take earphones. God, if this is anything like tour, I’m glad they’ll be on their own bus. I can’t help but feel sorry for the poor crew who have to share it with them.

 **\--  
**  
**Day 6, 5pm.**

If it seems like this diary has become a paper trail of Tessa and Scott hooking up, it’s because it has. It’s been six days, the beer is gone, our hiking boots have given us all blisters, and we’re bored out of our minds. This is all we have left. This is our legacy.

Kaetlyn took first watch this morning – the easy way out, as we all know by now that they don’t ever venture outside until at least ten a.m.

Meagan had to be coerced into the midday shift with a promise that she could borrow my phone for an hour. She says that she left hers behind in order to “immerse herself in the here and now rather than be attached to a digital umbilical cord”. She’s video calling her dogs right now.

I’m on duty from 4pm to 8pm. So far I’ve racked up one trip to refill a water bottle by Tessa, Scott poking his head out at half 6 to check if dinner had been cooked yet, and a rare double sighting when the two of them slunk out to the campfire to grab leftover bean stew.

If it bothered me more, I might try and convince them to actually join the rest of us for meals, but we’re six days into this trip. I’ve given up pretending that it’s not actually entertaining watching them dance around each other when they’re out in public, like they don’t know that _we_ know full well they’re not spending eight hours in a tent having deep, meaningful conversations about their purpose in life and the metaphysical implications of existence.  

Patrick, the hero that he is, is taking one for the team and pulling the night shift. I don’t know how late he plans to stay up. We’ve told him that until midnight is compulsory – anything after that is masochism. I hope he doesn’t stay up all night, but he seems as oddly invested in this process as I am.

Does Stockholm Syndrome apply in this situation? We’ve all been trapped in their excruciatingly slow process of figuring out that they’re the only two idiots in the world who can stand each other.

 **\--  
**  
**Day 7, 2am.**

I lied.

Patrick didn’t take the night shift alone. I stayed up with him the entire time – we all did, in fact.

I was supposed to clock off Tessa-and-Scott Watch at 8pm last night, but that obviously didn’t happen. None of us went to sleep early. Meagan said it was because she was too excited about going home tomorrow, but I saw her yawning three times in a row as she dragged her sleeping bag out to wrap around her shoulders. She’d never admit it, but she gets sentimental sometimes. She wanted to savour this last night, before we head back to civilisation and our packed schedules. And honestly? So did I.

Meagan and Kaetlyn and Patrick and I, we all sat around the fire together, poking at the last remains of Meagan’s bean stew with a stick and talking about what we were gonna miss on tour for the next few months. Tessa and Scott even came out to join us, eventually. Scott produced a few cans of beer from his rucksack – ones that he’d tucked away to celebrate the very last night, he said – and we cracked them open and passed them round. Patrick hijacked Meagan’s speakers to blast his “Mellow Tunes” playlist.

It was nice just to sit there, the six of us, talking about life. There are very few people you can be that honest with. We’re pretty lucky to have each other. Travelling the country as the team that won the Olympic gold medal is cool, but it’s cooler to know that you did so with five people who will always have your back, through thick and thin.

Meagan fell asleep first. One minute she was chattering away to Kaetlyn about her future plans for her blog and her technical specialist qualification and her coaching - the next, nothing. She conked out straight into her sleeping bag. Doing my duty as a partner, I carried her back to her tent, and Kaetlyn took the opportunity to retire to bed as well.

I came back to find Patrick trying very hard not to look like he was staring at Tessa and Scott as they danced to the music still playing from Meagan’s speakers.

Well, it wasn’t exactly dancing. They just stood there and swayed – perfectly in time with the music, like always. It wasn’t like their performances on ice. It was small and simple - Scott’s head on Tessa’s shoulder, her arms wrapped around his neck, the two of them swaying with the music. Still, it was unfairly beautiful.

I don’t know what it is about them, but they have an unwavering ability to look like the only moments they ever find peace is in each other’s arms. I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched them backstage at a show, clattering down the hallway towards each other with two minutes left to go before they’re due on the ice, and always, they make time to slip their arms around each other and breathe. The world makes time for them.

I’ve discussed this with Patrick at length, and the most we’ve been able to conclude is that it must be what comes from spending twenty-one years of life utterly devoted to one another. You always feel like you’re intruding, like you’ve happened across some intimate moment that’s meant only for the two of them.

I can’t even be mad at them for it. They’re too disgustingly enamoured with each other to be mad at. It’d be like kicking a puppy.

The only thing this trip has done for me is confirm what I always knew: if they ever get their act together and get married, I’m going to demand a special order of recognition for my services to the country in bringing them together. And then I’m going to burn this diary, before Tessa can find it first.

 **\--  
**  
**Day 7, 11am.**

We made it. The end is in sight. We’re half an hour from where we originally parked the van, and the world looks so beautiful again. There’s sunlight streaming through the trees; I can feel it on my skin, even through the layer of grit and grime.

The first thing I’m going to do when I get back home is take an hour-long bath.

Every step takes me closer to salvation. Even Meagan’s perked up – she’s humming now, and Kaetlyn and Patrick have linked arms as they lead the way. We’re going home. We made it through seven days of hell, and we came out relatively unscathed. There were times it seemed touch and go, but I think we got there in the end.

Tessa and Scott seem pretty convinced that the Thank You Canada Tour 2 is on the cards for next year. All I can say is that if they think I’m EVER repeating this pre-tour trip, I’m going to be the one in charge. Next time, I’m vetoing the camping. We’re doing something completely mindless and relaxing, like renting out a hotel in Barbados and sitting by the pool for seven days straight. And our rooms will be very, very, VERY far from each other. Separate wings, if possible.

But I’ll let you know.

For now, a short drive, and a bath, and sleep, and a distant dream that I never have to hear the words “business partners” and try to keep a straight face ever again.

We’re going home.


End file.
